


Mistakes on the Part of Nature

by stillscape



Category: Parks and Recreation
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-04
Updated: 2015-04-04
Packaged: 2018-03-21 05:50:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 14,793
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3680334
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stillscape/pseuds/stillscape
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>From  a kinkmeme prompt: "Leslie has been dumped in all of the worst ways. After she confesses this to Ben, he goes about making those situations ~sexytimes~. (Really hot not-gonna-leave-you shower sex, picnic sex, Ben dancing to single ladies to cheer her up, etc.) Bonus points if it's really soppy and the last one he does is propose to her for reals instead of asking her never to call him again."</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This was written as the back half of S4 was airing, so is only canon-compliant up to about "Campaign Shake-Up." Thanks, as ever, to diaphenia and craponaspatula.

“Leslie?” 

“Yeah?” She was glad that her bedroom was completely dark, and that she couldn’t see Ben at all right now. Feeling him was more important. She’d spent the last few months looking at him, from various distances, knowing that they couldn’t touch. So now? Curled up against him in her bed, with his hand tangled in her hair and _her_ hand resting comfortably on his chest? 

Kind of perfect. Scary as hell, but perfect. 

“We’re _doing this_.” His heartbeat sped up when he said it—she could feel it through her fingertips—and hers followed suit. 

“We really are,” she said. “We really, really are.”

“Leslie?” he asked again. His hand left her hair, trailed down her arm, came to rest on top of hers. 

“Yeah?”

“Were you…were you thinking about this?”

Was she thinking about…she’d been imagining potential reunions in the months they’d been apart. Most of them had to do with the election. That was the most immediate thing keeping them apart. Somehow, she thought, everything would come to a head on Election Day, and whether she won or lost…

Usually she won, of course; they were her daydreams, after all. But sometimes, just to keep things realistic, she imagined losing. Either way, she’d step off the podium after delivering her speech, and hug Ann and her mom and even Ron, and when she glanced to the side, Ben would be there, smiling proudly at her. She tried to vary that part of the fantasy, cover all her options—so sometimes she imagined he’d brought her flowers; other times it was waffles or chicken soup. 

Once she’d imagined the election and Ben wasn’t there, at all. That was the first night she’d cried.

Somehow she’d never imagined _any_ of the recently transpired events—not her own horribly childish behavior, not his nearly-equally-childish retaliation, not her confession, not his kiss.

Especially not that kiss. Her knees buckled again, just thinking about it, and that was absurd; she wasn’t even bearing weight on her knees right now. 

“Constantly. I told you that.” She trembled a little bit, and he squeezed her hand. “Were you?”

His voice came out ragged, half-broken. “No. I mean, yeah, but I was trying not to.” 

A chill ran down her spine. “You were trying not to think about—”

“All the time. I was thinking about you all the time. I couldn’t stop. Why do you think I was trying to get away from you?” 

Frantic, needy makeup sex was not in their plans. They’d already discussed it, haltingly and with many awkward euphemisms. That it would be better not to let…physical stuff…get in the way of figuring out how to do this thing for real. That it would be sensible to wait for a day or two, get their heads on straight, before they restarted the intimate part of their relationship. 

She thought at one point, they might have agreed that it made more sense for Ben to sleep at his own house tonight, but he’d never gotten around to leaving. Thank goodness for that; another night alone would have been too much to bear. Ben was most certainly in her bed right this instant. 

Ben. Was in her bed. Right this instant.

And she wasn’t having sex with him right this instant. 

Well, that didn’t make any sense at all. Nobody could kiss somebody like that unless they wanted to have sex with them, right this instant, and that was a terribly convoluted sentence she’d just thought, grammar-wise. But damn it, she hadn’t even _wanted_ to get laid in months, because she couldn’t with Ben and she didn’t want anybody else, and damn it, he was in her bed right this instant, and her lady parts were throbbing, and he’d kissed her like that.

Her knees buckled again. 

“Ben?” Saying his name felt strangely intimate, in the darkness, after all this time, and knowing no one else could hear her. 

“Yeah?” 

She let her hand trail a little bit lower on his torso, and he tensed up slightly under her touch. “I…don’t think I can wait until we figure out the logistical details.” 

“Oh, thank god,” he said, instantly. 

Leslie wanted to smile, but she couldn’t, because Ben’s mouth was in the way. Then he abruptly pulled back, rolled over, and switched on the bedside lamp.

“What’s the matter?” she asked. 

“Nothing.” It came out muffled, through the t-shirt he was already taking off. “I just want to be able to see you.” She ripped her shirt off too. There was no point in slowing down the process now; properly seductive undressing could come later. 

Leslie had no idea how much time had passed when they finally both collapsed on the pillows. She had no idea, really, what day it was, or what her favorite color was, or who was currently Vice President of the United States. She just knew that what had just happened had been…intense. Ben’s hair was sticking up in more directions than logically possible. Most of the bedclothes weren’t on the bed, or even on the floor; they were twisted around one of the legs of her bed. And she was definitely sweaty. Very, very sweaty. 

“Good lord,” Ben said. Leslie turned her head to look at him, waiting for something else to come out, but that seemed to be all the speech he was capable of at the moment, so she scooted up next to him for a cuddle. 

“Ew.” He was all sweaty too. It wasn’t even that warm in her bedroom; she barely had the heat on upstairs.

“Ew yourself.” 

They cuddled anyway. 

“How,” Ben said—he was playing with her hair again—“did we ever think we weren’t going to do that right away?” 

“I have no idea,” Leslie muttered. 

She yawned, and Ben rolled over, propping himself up on one elbow so he could gaze at her. Ugh. If she was exhausted, which she thought she might be, she probably looked it. Haggard. Big circles under her eyes. Old. All of it. Maybe it would be better if they turned the lights off, so Ben couldn’t see her anymore. That seemed stupid, even to her, but after months apart, she didn’t want him to see anything but her best. 

“Are you _tired_?” he asked. He sounded amused. “You’re never tired.”

“Don’t sound so surprised.” She yawned again.

“You’re _drowsy_. I’ve…never seen you drowsy.” 

“Shut up.” The past few months had been exhausting; didn’t he know that? Work, campaign, and all the other things she normally did in a week. She had been sleeping even less than usual, she hadn’t been sleeping very well when she did sleep, and there were those few nights she’d cried. Ben had kept her eating habits on a more even keel, too, before they’d broken up. Slowly, she’d slipped back to waffles six days a week and NutriYum bars on the seventh, and that was having an effect on her, maybe. 

Neither of them said anything for a while, and slowly, their situation came back into focus.

Ben was in her bed and they’d just had sex and he was her boss and she was running for office and they couldn’t do it, but they were doing it, they were definitely doing it, because they couldn’t _not_ be together. That just didn’t even seem possible, anymore, even if being together wasn’t possible either. She would be miserable. She _had_ been miserable. Relatively speaking, of course, since she didn’t really do misery, but…miserable. 

But god, they couldn’t do it, which was why they’d broken up in the first place, and…

“Come on,” he said. “Shower. Both of us. Then sleep.” 

“You go first.” 

“Come with me.” 

The words struck her in the chest, like a bullet, and she splintered. She tried to take a deep breath, calm herself, but something was wrong with the air; it wasn’t going into her lungs properly. “No,” she mumbled. “Go ahead.” 

“Why—”

Crap. She was barely keeping herself together as it was, and now she was going to have to explain the weirdest phobia ever? It wasn’t the first time he’d asked her to shower with him, but she’d always managed to deflect before. Humorously. Maybe she could…

“I just—I don’t—” The air still wasn’t working, and she was gasping now, horribly. 

“Hey.” A single tear was working its way down her cheek, and he gently brushed it away. “What’s wrong? Is this about the shower?” 

A knife was in her heart, that’s what was wrong, and she couldn’t tell how much was genuine fear versus how much was fatigue. So much for deflecting. “You’re going to break up with me, aren’t you?”

“I— _what_?” 

“Are you going to break up with me? Again? In the shower?” She could feel more tears forming behind her eyes, and damn it, no, she wasn’t going to cry, because that was ridiculous. 

Ben reached over and gathered her in his arms, just as she started shaking. “Leslie.” A kiss went into the top of her head, possibly. “Why would I do that? Anywhere, not just in the shower.” 

That was when she lost it. Which probably should have been his cue to leave. 

Instead, somehow—she wasn’t really aware of the details, she was feeling too many feelings to notice any details—she found herself wrapped in her warmest pink bathrobe, seated at her kitchen table behind stacks of campaign paperwork, with dried tears streaking her face.

And Ben looked confused as hell, but he was still in her kitchen, with his hair sticking straight up, putting extra whipped cream on a mug of hot chocolate. 

The hot chocolate didn’t make sense. 

She’d just freaked out and cried after sex and accused him of trying to break up with her and all of that was insane, wasn’t it? It was. It was insane. It was exactly the kind of behavior that would _cause_ someone to break up with someone else—or she thought it might be; she’d never done anything like that before. And this was his reaction? 

Okay. Clearly, he wasn’t going to break up with her. He’d kissed her like that in the tiny park, so that was a dumb thing to think. Her lungs seemed to be working again, and she took advantage of that, getting in a couple of good deep breaths. Could she trust herself to look at him again? Maybe. Yes. Okay. She did that. 

Ben looked exhausted, too. But he still had a really cute face, and it was smiling at her, a little hesitantly. 

“Sorry,” she said. “I just thought, for a minute—” 

“Are you crazy?” he interrupted. “Do you have any idea how much I’ve missed you?” 

“No.” She was feeling much better now. “I don’t know anything. You haven’t been talking to me.” She tried to shoot him her most winning grin. It must have been a decent enough effort, because he groaned. 

“Because I _couldn’t_.” They’d had this conversation once already, she remembered that now, and it had ended in the decision not to immediately resume the intimate part of their relationship. 

Way back when they’d first started dating in secret, she had told Ben about everyone she’d previously been with, because that was what you did when you started something new. But she’d never told him about how most of those relationships had ended. Well, why would she? It was kind of embarrassing, honestly, even though Leslie didn’t believe in embarrassment. She hadn’t even told Ann about the endings, not until Ann had really needed to hear them. 

Ben probably needed to hear them now. 

She picked up the mug for the first time. It was surprisingly light. So light that she almost smashed herself in the face with it. 

“I only put about an inch of liquid in it,” Ben said, apologetically. “The rest is just whipped cream.” 

Deep breath. _Now_ maybe she could deflect. 

“The shower thing is just a dumb…like a superstition. It’s like a really dumb superstition.”

He raised an eyebrow. “You’re not superstitious.” 

Damn it, she couldn’t deflect; he knew her too well for that. She steeled herself, stared at the mug, and started. 

“One time a guy broke up with me when we were in the shower together.” 

She’d intended to stop there, wait for his reaction, but instead she found that more words were coming, unbidden. The broken kneecap. The picnic. The skywriting. The guy, way back in high school, who couldn’t even break up with her over the phone, and made his mom call and do it for him. Okay, that one had always been kind of funny, even at the time. 

The hot chocolate made perfect sense now. It was a focal point, something to look at while she was talking so she wouldn’t have to look at Ben. 

“And once, I’d been with this guy for a while, and he got down on one knee and begged me never to call him again.” 

She held the mug up to her face, using it as a sort of blockade, so that she could just barely see him above the tower of whipped cream. Maybe she licked a little bit of the whipped cream, too; she was only human. 

Ben looked ill. 

“And I gave you a button.” He swallowed. “Is that the end of the list?” 

“No!” How could he think—she couldn’t let him think that. “No. That was—” She slid her right hand across the table, and Ben grasped it. “You didn’t want to.”

“No. It was the last thing I wanted to do.” He swallowed again. “Well, I mean—I wanted you to have the button.” The corner of his mouth turned up, a little. 

“And most of the time, I don’t even think about any of those things. I mean, you know—it’s okay. _I’m_ okay. You know that.”

“Well—” He still looked the tiniest bit shaken. “Why didn’t you tell me before, then?” 

She shrugged one shoulder. “I don’t know. It’s not something—I’m not embarrassed about it. But it’s kind of embarrassing.” Ben shook his head, and she smiled, and finally took a sip of the hot chocolate. 

It wasn’t hot anymore. But he’d put marshmallows under the whipped cream. 

Her heart skipped several beats, and probably only one of those was because of the sugar.


	2. Chapter 2

“Okay, so, logistics.” She didn’t want to get out of bed. She did want waffles. Those were contradictory feelings, since waffles had never once spontaneously appeared in her bed. Crap. Still, it was amazing how much more rational she felt after four hours of sleep. 

Ben groaned. “Well, we have to tell Chris, and then you have to tell your campaign managers, and then we deal with the fallout.” He reached over, stroked her arm with his thumb. “That’s the long and the short of it.” 

“We should come up with a plan, though.” Several ideas had run through her mind last night, while she was drifting off (in Ben’s arms, she’d been drifting off in Ben’s arms. That was important). Like moving to Guatemala. Or someplace less humid. Arizona, maybe. 

She didn’t want to come up with anything more practical than that.

“Telling everybody _is_ a plan.” 

Ugh. He was right, but ugh. She rolled out of bed. “I’m going to shower.” 

“Okay.” 

Leslie didn’t bother shutting the bathroom door all the way—she never did; too much steam buildup—so she didn’t hear Ben enter the bathroom while she was halfway through shampooing.

“You don’t still think I’m going to break up with you, do you?” he called. 

She jumped, slightly, but managed to avoid slipping. “No.”

“Good.”

She’d already started pouring conditioner into her hand, but when Ben started unexpectedly climbing into the shower with her, she squeaked and dropped the bottle on her foot. 

“What are you—”

Kissing her, apparently. 

He broke it off, just as she was really starting to get into it. “Ben, that’s not fair,” she protested. He’d already crouched down to pick up the bottle, which he casually tossed out of the shower. Completely out of the shower. 

“Don’t want that in the way,” he said. Before she could ask why it would be in the _way_ —in the way of _what_ , exactly, didn’t he know she needed to put it on her hair—he’d started kissing her leg, on her knee, right on the tiny scar from where she’d broken her kneecap. 

The warm water kept beating down on her back, and Ben kissed up her thigh, to her hip, across her waist, up to her breast. 

Somewhat predictably, he stopped there for a while.

And they were both soaking wet and his hair looked ridiculous that way, floppy and dripping. They were wasting water, too. They were wasting so much water and she didn’t care, just like she didn’t care that Ben looked completely absurd right now, half crouched over in her shower, trying to keep his balance while he worked her nipple with his mouth. Absurd but sexy. He was hanging on to her waist, which was fine; that was an excellent place for his hands to go, and—

“How does shower sex even happen?” she wondered, and it was only after Ben looked up at her with a funny grin that she realized she’d said it out loud. 

“Have you never…?” He stood up. He was standing up in more than one way, she noticed. 

“I’ve _tried_ , a couple of times.” She tried not to stare—oh, what the hell, they were back together and if she wanted to stare at it, she would. “It never really worked out. And then that—that thing happened, and I haven’t gotten in a shower with anyone since.” 

Ben slipped his hand down her side to her hip, then between her legs. 

“Well,” he said, with a wry smile, “you’re already _so_ wet.” 

She cupped her hand on her chest just long enough to collect some water, which she used to splash him in the face. “That was _terrible_.” 

He grinned. “Yeah, I’m embarrassed for both of us.” 

The logistics were ridiculous. But they were both so good at problem solving. 

They worked things out, in the end. 

Her bathroom got flooded, and they needed about twelve towels to mop up the floor afterwards. And her water bill was probably going to be ridiculous this month.

But they worked things out. 

“Ben?” she said later, when they’d finally made it down to her kitchen. That had taken awhile; her knees still felt wobbly.

“Yeah?”

“If you ever wanted to shower together again, I—I wouldn’t object.”

When he responded by kissing her, she could feel the wheels spinning in his head. She assumed those wheels had something to do with when they’d next be in the same location and in need of a shower. 

As it turned out, she was only half right. 

\---

She really didn’t need for Ben to keep trying to prove his love. She had official government documents for that.

He kept trying anyway. Mostly just with smaller things. Stuffed animals. Somehow her whipped cream supply never seemed to run dry anymore. Amazing back rubs. Waffle necklace. Oh, right, and he was doing an amazing job at managing her campaign, too.

It was kind of awesome. So awesome that Ann declared the two of them “officially gross,” which made Leslie wonder if Ann had been hanging out with April and she’d just been too busy to notice. 

Neither of them had brought up any of her terrible breakups since the shower sex, which was fine. She assumed he’d forgotten about them—or not forgotten, since Ben rarely forgot anything, but she assumed _he_ assumed they didn’t need to be addressed anymore. Sure, he got all concerned about her kneecap when she told him about falling down on the ice at the disastrous campaign relaunch event, and asked if she needed an ambulance, but that was something he might have asked even if she’d never told him about that particular breakup. 

Just in case, though, she decided she ought to find out if he’d had any horribly traumatic breakups that _she_ could try to make up to _him_ , in the event that reversing breakups became a competitive sport. Part of her kind of hoped it would.

But he hadn’t had any. 

“They’ve almost all been…kind of mutual,” he said, over waffles at JJ’s. “Mutual recognition that it wasn’t working, and…” He shrugged. 

Leslie chewed thoughtfully on a whipped-cream covered strawberry, and swallowed. “You’ve seriously never been dumped?” That would kind of make sense, she thought, since no one in their right mind would break up with Ben.

“Well, sure. Who hasn’t?” 

“But nothing like…” 

He thought for a moment. “Um, in eighth grade, a girl dumped me in front of the entire school, at a dance. But we’d only started going out about two hours previously, so it wasn’t that big a deal. And then obviously, I got dumped during Ice Town, but that made sense to me even at the time.” 

“That’s the best you’ve got?” 

“Um, someone cheated on me in college, but I guess I thought we were exclusive and she didn’t? It all somehow wound up looking like my fault.”

Leslie stared into her waffle for a moment, then looked up and grinned at him. “Want me to punch her?”

“Good lord, no.” He was smiling, though. “Okay. Someone broke up with me over email, once, and she accidentally CC’d Chris. I guess that was the worst? Mostly because Chris cried _for_ me, for about a week.”

That still didn’t sound so terrible, not compared to what she’d been through. “But no one’s ever—ever—I don’t know, hired a singing telegram or something?” 

He chuckled momentarily, but his expression quickly changed to one of concern. “No. Why? Did someone do that to you?” 

“No,” she said, quickly, and Ben raised his eyebrows. “Okay, yes. But we’d only been on one date, so I hardly think it counts as a breakup.” 

Just to be on the safe side, later that afternoon she “accidentally” CC’d Chris on a really sappy email. It was nothing Chris hadn’t heard during her ethics trial anyway, she figured. 

Ben seemed to take her email as a challenge, though. He didn’t say anything, but he started getting sneaky. He started getting _good_ at being sneaky. Even better than she was, maybe. 

For the most part, she’d abandoned trying to be sneaky in favor of being forthright and honest, which mainly translated into jumping him whenever she felt like it. He didn’t seem to mind. Well, sometimes he got a little grumpy if it interfered with campaign work, but he never stayed grumpy for long. How could he? She was Leslie Fucking Knope, and she was, as Ben had told her on more than one occasion, so good at so many things. 

And Ben made a very adorable sneak. Like a fox. A sexy fox with a bushy tail. Sometimes his hair looked like that. Or like a red panda. Red pandas were adorable, and had bushy tails, but there were no red pandas at the Pawnee Zoo for her to observe, so she wasn’t 100% sure red pandas were sneaky. Sexy fox was better, she thought.

Ann told her not to say that to Ben’s face. 

But he was totally a sneaky, sexy fox.

\---

One afternoon, he handed her a campaign binder and said “Study this—I need to run out for more office supplies.”And she trusted him, which was silly when she thought about it later, because when had she ever run out of office supplies? And she’d trusted him again when he’d texted her to come out back and help him unload the car, which was also silly, because when did he ever park in the back of her house?

When she walked out the back door, there was a beautiful picnic in her backyard, complete with wine and flowers. 

“I thought I was supposed to be working,” she said, through a smile, although the first thought that ran through her mind was _how quickly can I rip his clothes off?_

He cocked his head. “Well, as your campaign manager—”

“And my boyfriend.” 

“That too. The point is, once in a while you should eat something other than waffles.” 

“Well, that’s your opinion,” she said. She sat down anyway. 

The weather wasn’t anywhere near warm enough to be ideal for picnicking, but he’d put a nice thick quilt on the ground, and the food was good, and the wine made them both feel a little warmer. 

“So why are we here and not in a park?” she asked. 

“Um,” said Ben. He was having a little difficulty talking, which was her fault; she’d knocked him flat on his back not that long ago. “Because there’s the potential for political scandal if we make out in a park?” He maybe had a point. That was why she’d knocked him flat on his back, because she’d wanted to make out with him. 

“Not much, though. Everyone knows we’re public now.” Saying those words still gave her a little thrill of excitement, and maybe they gave Ben one too, considering the way he was looking at her right now. Pawnee’s news media had already beaten the story to death, but they hadn’t been public for _that_ long. 

“We can’t have wine in the park. No alcohol.” 

“That’s true, I guess.” 

“And once you told me never to have a picnic in any of the parks, because the raccoons here aren’t nocturnal and they would take me down.” 

“That does sound like something I would say.” 

“You know everything there is to know about Pawnee’s parks.” 

A switch flipped, and Leslie’s lady parts started doing her thinking for her. “And you’re pretty easy to take down,” she said, poking him in the chest with a cold finger. “You also know exactly what to say to get me to sleep with you in the middle of the afternoon.” 

“Wait, wait,” Ben said, scrambling upright. “You haven’t seen the chocolate-covered strawberries yet.”

Okay, she could control her lady parts for a little while longer. “Where’d you get chocolate-covered strawberries?”

“I made them.” 

Four of the twelve were missing. Not completely missing. The tops remained in the box. Three strawberry tops and one large strawberry with a bite taken out of it. 

Ben sighed. “I should’ve known better than to leave anything in the fridge with those two around.” 

“It’s okay,” she said, through a mouthful of strawberry and whipped cream. Because he hadn’t forgotten the whipped cream. 

The time between the last strawberry’s disappearance and when Ben found himself in her living room, getting his clothes getting ripped off, was very brief indeed. He looked a little bewildered, but really, how had he expected this to end? A woman had needs, and right now she needed his slight but powerful frame to be naked so she could do things to it. If it had been warmer, and she hadn’t had neighbors, she might not even have dragged him inside. 

He cringed a little when her palms found his bare skin. “Your hands are freezing,” he gasped. But they didn’t slow down. 

A moment later, Leslie realized: she should’ve put on her fingerless gloves for the picnic. Not, she thought, as Ben’s equally cold hands found the clasp of her bra—not that she needed to dress more seductively. 

\---

“Leslie?”

“Yeah?” 

“I never told you _why_ I got dumped via email.” They hadn’t bothered to move from the sofa or put on clothes aside from underwear (because while having sex on the sofa was hot as hell, sitting on it bare-bottomed was weird and gross). She’d draped an afghan over herself, and propped her feet up on the ottoman, and then Ben had insinuated himself under the afghan too. Screw the election; she wanted to stay here forever, half-naked in her living room with Ben’s head in her lap and the TV tuned to ESPN. 

Her nails clenched, involuntarily, over his shoulder, and she hastily tried to turn the gesture into scratching his back instead. “Because she was an idiot.”

“Because I was out of town ten or eleven weeks out of every twelve, and I knew that wasn’t fair.”

“So it was about your job.”

“No, she knew about the job going into it.” He remained silent for a moment, and she felt his chest rise and fall against her. “But I tried to make up for that, you know? I tried too hard. She thought so, anyway.”

She stared at the television. Highlights from some college basketball game that she didn’t care about because it wasn’t her Hoosiers. Remembered they hadn’t brought anything from the picnic inside yet. Raked her nails over his shoulder blades. 

“I don’t think there’s any such thing as trying too hard. Not if you love the other person.”

“I would agree with that.” 

They watched the highlights of another college game. It didn’t involve the Hoosiers either. 

“Did you love her?” 

He shifted slightly, but it didn’t feel like an uneasy shift, just like he was getting more comfortable. “I think I could have.” 

“So she was definitely an idiot, then,” Leslie said. “But I should thank her.”

The television switched from basketball to Peyton Manning, and she cared the tiniest bit about that—not because of football, but because it had to do with Indiana.

“Leslie?”

“Yeah?” 

“Love you.” 

\---

She was about to leave after her two hours of Parks work (who was she kidding, she always managed to stay for a third hour, with the promise she’d leave earlier tomorrow) when Ben texted her. She didn’t think anything of it—just took his message at its word and went to meet him in Ramsett Park. April was magically on top of the soccer field project, it was the first unseasonably nice day of the year, and it was also the first weekday she could remember, in a long time, where she only had thirty things to do after work instead of eighty. 

Unfortunately, all thirty of those things had to do with Jennifer Barkley. 

So going to Ramsett Park was the thirty-first thing she had to do today. Thirty-one was still a totally manageable number, though, even if Jennifer Barkley was involved. Besides, she absolutely did not mind adding another thing to her to-do list if that thing was seeing Ben. Or if that thing involved going to a park. She loved parks. She loved Ben. She loved Ben and she loved parks and she loved seeing Ben in a park, which was what she was seeing at this very moment. He was on a bench. With flowers. 

“Hi.” He handed her the flowers.

“Hi yourself,” she replied. She glanced around. The park was reasonably crowded, considering the season. Must’ve been the nice weather. “Is it too scandalous if we make out for a little while?” 

“No, but—” Her flowers hit the ground. 

A few minutes later, he tried again. 

“Leslie.” 

She took a deep, frustrated breath. “I wasn’t finished.” 

He wrenched her arms from his shoulders, with some difficulty. 

“Listen,” he said. But that was all he said.

“You’re not talking.”

“Don’t listen to _me_. Just listen.” 

She listened. Kids playing, their parents talking, dogs barking, a plane passing overhead, traffic, the usual. 

“What am I listening for?” 

He pointed up. 

“The plane?” 

The bench was cement, and it was kind of cold even though she’d been sitting on it for a while, so she scooted into Ben’s lap, and watched the sky. 

Letters started appearing, and she felt a tiny thrill run down the back of her neck.

“Ben,” she said, slowly, “what is this?” 

He nuzzled his face into her neck. “Just watch.” 

L-E-S-L-I-E K-N-O-P-E…well, that was how the first batch of skywriting had started. 

F-O-R P-A-W-N-E-E C-I-T-Y C-O-U-N-C-I-L

“How did you—Ben, we can’t afford that. I know we can’t afford that.” She kissed him anyway. It was probably the most exciting thing she’d seen in the sky, ever, even more exciting than the time she’d spotted a jet that _might_ have been Air Force One. 

“Who says we paid for it? It was donated.”

“By whom?” 

“I know a guy who knows a guy.” 

“Who do you know who knows a guy?” Most people in the park were looking at the skywriting now. 

Ben tightened his grip around her waist. “Tom. Tom knows a guy.” 

“So is this going to help the campaign?” 

“I have no idea,” he said. “I just wanted to do it.” 

She kissed him again, slowly, and pressed as close against him as she could, which wasn’t nearly close enough. A shirt button ground painfully into her torso, and she couldn’t tell if it was her shirt button or his, or whether that mattered. 

“You’re not looking at the skywriting,” he said. 

“Don’t need to.” 

“But it’s positive this time.” 

She took half a glance back at the sky to appease him, then turned back and grinned. “I love it,” she said. “But I love you more. Will it be scandalous if we have sex on this bench?” Clearly he needed to get laid; he’d been a little more uptight than usual, these past couple of weeks. Not that they hadn’t been having sex. They’d definitely been having lots of awesome sex. But she was pretty sure they would both benefit from Ben getting laid. 

His mouth twisted up at one side, and he squeezed her even more tightly. “Yes,” he murmured in her ear. “It would be very scandalous.” 

They went back to her house. 

She was moaning his name before the letters even faded from the sky. 

\---

“You know you don’t have to make any—any grand romantic gestures, right?” It was the first sentence she’d been capable of forming in a while. 

“That wasn’t a grand romantic gesture. It was a sensible political gesture, and it had nothing to do with any assholes you may or may not have dated in the past.” 

“Mm,” she said. “Campaign strategy sex is the best sex.” She’d always suspected it would be…well, no. Oval Office sex would be the best sex, but they weren’t quite there yet. Campaign strategy sex would definitely do.


	3. Chapter 3

Okay, so _after_ Ben had gotten lucky following their return from Indianapolis, and after she’d gone home and showered and tried to get a little extra sleep—after that, when she picked up the newspaper and read yet another article backing Bobby Newport— _then_ she felt terribly, terribly guilty about blowing her interview. What had come over her? Sure, everyone needed to blow off steam every once in a while, but if she thought back to when they were planning the Harvest Festival, and how tirelessly she’d worked…

The Harvest Festival was the thing that had put her on the Pawnee political map in the first place. So if she wanted to win this election, then that was the Leslie Knope she needed to be. No. She needed to be better than that Leslie Knope. It was time to beat herself at her own game.

Good thing she was so competitive. 

No more drinking. No more fun, or very little fun. Work was fun. It was behind waffles and friends, sure, but her friends and her waffles would both understand if she needed to reprioritize, temporarily. She could pencil the fun into her calendar. Ben, no doubt hoping to avoid another incident, began penciling Ann-time into the campaign schedule. He was trying to be less of a fascist hard-ass, she knew. Being relaxed about work didn’t come naturally to him at all. He kept slipping back into Mean Ben—hard not to see that, once the sun returned to Pawnee and he broke out the Ray-Bans again—but he was trying. 

She loved him so much. 

And, like the Harvest Festival had been, the campaign was as much his as it was hers. In a way, she thought, the situation was flipped. If the Harvest Festival tanked, she would have lost her job. If her campaign tanked…well, Ben would find work, of course he would, but…

She had a lot of stress to release. So did Ben. He was working harder on the campaign than she was, and he still found time to give her amazing back rubs whenever she wanted them, which was more and more often these days. 

As for working _his_ stress out, well…well, he’d penciled in a few weekly video game sessions with Andy, and a weekly game of mini-golf with Tom. 

Oh, and he’d somehow retained possession of those “NYMPHO” pants. 

They both agreed that Tom was right. Those pants looked _great_ on Ben’s floor. 

“I really should find more to do outside the campaign,” he remarked. 

“Like what?”

He grinned, reached out an arm, rolled her over, and let his hand wander perilously close to her lady parts. 

“You.” 

“Again?” Not that she would mind. 

He ducked in and kissed her, slowly. “All the time.” 

She thought about jokingly telling him she’d have to buy him a pair of “NYMPHO” pants, too, but—eh. If she wanted to use her mouth for talking, she’d have to stop kissing him. 

But she couldn’t kiss him all the time.

One night, when she was alone, she caught a glimpse of Ben’s spare toothbrush on her sink, and the weight of everything he’d done for her—continued to do for her—finally hit. This was different. The Harvest Festival hadn’t just been for her job; it had been for everyone’s jobs, and for Pawnee. And sure, her campaign was for Pawnee too, because she wouldn’t be running for office if she didn’t think she could make a real, positive difference. But it was _her_ campaign, decidedly about her, and every time she wrote a position paper or distributed a flyer or shook a hand, she was selling herself; trying, desperately, to dispel that nagging sense of shame at her own narcissism. 

_Stay and help us build something_ echoed in her head. Was this what she had meant? Stay and help her build what? Herself? Her career?

If she won, she’d have two jobs, two wonderful, perfect jobs that she loved. Ben would have no jobs, but he’d have a success story under his belt, something that could be shown off, parlayed into another opportunity. 

If she lost, she’d have her public service career. It wasn’t everything she wanted, but if it was all she ever got, it would be enough. Ben would have…several months of effort and very little to show for it. 

That thought was too depressing to contemplate. A second opinion would help. She crashed City Hall the next morning, even though she wasn’t supposed to be at work that day, and waved a tantalizing baggie of bacon in Ron’s face until he agreed to accompany her to the nearest donut shop. 

“Yes,” Ron agreed through his fifth donut. “If you screw up your campaign, it will unfortunately reflect on Ben as well.” 

Crap. 

“But you won’t screw it up,” Ron continued. “You’ve never made the same mistake twice.”

Leslie bit into a donut (chocolate frosted, extra sprinkles) and thought about that as she chewed.

Screwing up and losing weren’t the same thing. 

“No,” she said, once she’d swallowed. “I haven’t.” 

\---

So she doubled down on all of it—studying, strategizing, going door-to-door, holding forums, shaking hands…

April threw an all-ages “spring fling” dance at the community center, and claimed she was only doing it so that she could swindle the department out of a huge appearance fee for Mouse Rat. (Ron, who seemed to be behind some of April’s new work ethic—what the _hell_ was going on at the Parks department in her absence?—forbade any of them from arguing otherwise). 

So they showed up to be supportive, of course—“and to meet voters,” Ben kept reminding her. And those things were the point. But there were a lot of kids at the event, she noticed, and that gave her an idea. 

She dragged Ben into the middle of the dance floor, where he just sort of followed her around without really doing anything that could be described as dancing. This was something to work on, she thought.

“I’m not going to break up with you in front of everybody,” she murmured.

“Okay…” He looked puzzled. 

Well, all right. They hadn’t talked about breakups in forever, not since the skywriting. 

“You know,” she said. “Like at your dance…”

He got it. “Backstage.”

“Backstage?” He was pulling her off the floor, now. “What’s backstage?”

“That’s where everyone went during middle school.” Donna caught Leslie’s eye as they rushed past, and gave her a nod and a thumbs-up. “Dances were in the cafeteria, which was also the auditorium, so everyone tried to go backstage.” 

They pushed through a side door, skirting piles of musical equipment. “And how many girls did you take backstage?” she asked, grinning, as they rounded a corner. No one would interrupt them here, she knew; the only thing in this hallway was the circuit breaker, so unless the power went out… 

“None, you know that. I got dumped at the dance.” 

“There could’ve been other dances.” 

Ben shook his head. “Eighth grade wasn’t the best time for me.” 

“Me either,” she admitted. Then she gave him her most seductive smile. “But, you know, now—now is a really good time for both of us, don’t you think?” She was pressed against a wall, now, looking up at him, waiting—but Ben didn’t make a move. He just stood there, gazing at her. She was about to ask _What was wrong with those girls?_ , or maybe just reach up and grab him, when he finally—

Her knees started to buckle again, but she quickly pulled herself together, and started feeling him up instead, since that was what happened in middle school. She thought so, anyway. It wasn’t like she had ever snuck behind the bleachers (that was the Pawnee tradition) during eighth grade dances, she’d been much too well-behaved for that…

“Okay,” Leslie said, breathlessly. “Now I _know_ there was something wrong with the girls in your middle school.” 

“I think it’s time to drop the middle school thing,” Ben said. His hands were still in her hair, and now he slid them out, down her sides, and wrapped his arms around her waist. 

Leslie screwed up her nose. “I was having fun with it.” She thought for a moment. The thing was, she was pretty sure no one in eighth grade had gone past second base. “On the other hand, there are some things I’d like to do to you right now, and they’re definitely not appropriate for eighth-graders.”

“That was my rationale.” 

They snuck out the back door, into her car, and back to her house, where she let him get way, way past second base. Past third base, even. 

\---

“You’re cute,” he said, much later, when they’d exhausted themselves. “I thought we were done with that, though.” 

“With sex?” Perish the thought. “Never.”

He chuckled. “Good lord, no. With the breakups thing…wait a minute. Did you put April up to this?” 

Leslie shook her head. “Honestly, no. Just taking advantage of the opportunity. Besides, you’ve done almost all of mine, so—” She grinned. “Turnabout is fair play.”

“ _Almost_ all?” he asked. “I got all of them.”

He hadn’t, though. There were two left, by her count. “Your mom hasn’t called to not break up with me for you.” The last one…going down on one knee…

“You’ve never even spoken to my mother. Have you?”

“No.”

“Well, wouldn’t it be really weird if she called you out of nowhere?” 

Leslie hadn’t thought about that. “I guess it would.”

“So it’s okay if we don’t do that one?”

“Of course,” she said, snuggling under the blankets. “It would have been okay if you’d stopped after the shower sex.”

“Besides…” He ran a hand through her hair, and left it there. “We’re not breaking up again, right?”

A little spark of heat radiated out from her chest. “Right.” 

\---

But, although being in love with her campaign manager (and having awesome sex with her campaign manager) was an awesome way to relieve some of her election-related tension, nothing could get rid of all her tension. Not even girls’ night with Ann could do that. After Ann went home, the piles and piles of campaign documents all over her house seemed to creep closer to her. Should she read them again? No. It was dark outside, really dark—of course it was dark, it was almost midnight—and she was going to go to bed, because that was the logical thing to do. So she brushed her teeth, washed her face, switched on her birdhouse nightlight, and climbed into bed, where her eyes absolutely refused to close. 

Leslie had rarely been frightened by being alone in the dark, not even when she was a small child. Big monsters couldn’t have lived under her bed; there was too much _stuff_ under her bed. Small monsters—well, she had never cared about small monsters; what could they possibly do to her? Besides, she had a nightlight. 

But the election started seeping out, spreading. She realized, now, that even though there were no campaign materials in her bedroom, the election had long since overtaken the stuff under her bed, and the bed itself. Now it was suffusing her entire bedroom, and her birdhouse nightlight wasn’t bright enough to shine through it. 

She switched her bedside lamp on. 

It was late, and Ben was probably asleep or close to it, but she called him anyway; surprisingly, he picked up before the first ring had even ended. 

“Leslie?” 

“What if I lose?” she blurted out. 

“We’ll get waffles.” 

That was probably true. “Yeah, but…” 

“And it’ll suck,” he continued, “and I’ll lose a lot of respect for the citizens of Pawnee.”

She fluffed her pillow against the headboard, crossed her legs, and leaned back. “I’ll probably get drunk.” 

“We all will.”

“And then what?”

Ben exhaled. “Well, then you’ll go back to work, and when another city council seat opens up, you’ll run again. And we’ll have a better idea of what we’re doing, that time, so…”

That wasn’t what she meant, though. 

“I don’t know what I’m going to do,” Ben said. “But that’s—don’t worry about it.” 

“That’s not—”

“Now. Don’t worry about it now. Can I, um…” He cleared his throat a little. “Can I call you back in about three minutes? My mom’s on the other line.” 

“Oh, yeah,” she said, quickly. “Sure thing. I’ll be here.” 

“Okay.” He paused. “Do you want me to come over?” 

“You don’t have to.” She’d turn the hallway light on and leave her bedroom door open. The election wasn’t bigger than her hallway, yet. 

“Okay. I’ll call you right back.” 

“Okay,” she agreed. 

Leslie got up and switched on the hallway light, then rearranged her pillows and settled under her covers. 

_We_ , he’d said. _We’ll have a better idea of what we’re doing._ If she lost, she’d run again, and he’d be there. 

The bed seemed really…big. And empty. Big and empty. Never mind that it was the same bed she’d been sleeping in, nearly always alone, for over a decade. After the election, she thought. Not now; they had too much going on now. And she’d need time to clean out her closets. Okay, the whole house, if she was being honest. But after the election, she’d ask him if he wanted to move in. 

Twenty minutes later, her phone rang. “Sorry,” Ben said. “My mother got…chatty.”

“Anything new?”

“No, just nagging me about visiting again.”

She put him on speakerphone, set the phone on the other pillow, and listened to the recap of his mother’s phone call. It wasn’t quite the same as having him there, but... 

After the election. Definitely. 

“I changed my mind,” she said, abruptly. “I do want you to come over.” 

“Okay,” he said at once—and he hung up, just like that. Fifteen minutes later, she heard a key turn in the front door, and then he was there, in her bedroom. 

“Hi.” She patted the other side of her bed. 

“Hi.” Ben stripped off his windbreaker and jeans, folded them neatly, placed them on one of her bureaus, and climbed into bed. “What’s up?” 

She exhaled. “Nothing. I just missed you.” 

Ben reached over and switched off the lamp, and the election stayed downstairs, where it was supposed to. 

\---

Ben’s predictions turned out to be almost entirely correct. 

It was close. That was some comfort, at least. Not much.

She got through the concession speech gracefully, at least; and her mother said she was proud. Chris was the only person who cried. 

No one felt like going to the Bulge or the Snakehole, so the best campaign staff ever retreated to her house. Everybody brought something—Tom showed up with DJ Roomba; Andy, April, and Donna ran to the liquor store and returned with whipped cream-flavored vodka and a fifth of Scotch; Ann, friend and beautiful nurse Ann, made the JJ’s run, and even though there were waffles, Ron disappeared to Food N’Stuff, then fired up her barbecue and spent the night grilling steaks. Whatever; waffles totally went with steak when you were wasted. And there were flowers, perfect flowers, a mismatched bouquet of random colors and varieties and—and thank god Ben thought to put them in water before she started in on the whipped cream-tinis, because man, that stuff was strong. Delicious and strong. 

At one in the morning, Tom fell over DJ Roomba while demonstrating…Leslie had no idea what dance he was demonstrating, but whatever it was, Donna was leading and—well, come to think of it, Tom probably wouldn’t have been able to keep up even if he was completely sober. 

At two in the morning, April passed out on the rug and Ann, giggling, drew a mustache on her face. 

At three in the morning, Leslie realized they’d forgotten to invite Jerry. 

At seven in the morning, Ron woke everyone up and cooked all the bacon and eggs Leslie had. 

Everyone went home to nurse their hangovers after that, everyone but Ann and Ben, and Leslie spent her first day of _not being elected_ on the sofa. Wedged between them, watching whatever was on TV, she wondered if the throbbing in her head was due more to alcohol or to sadness, and if there was anything else...anything at all… 

Most of all, she wondered what she’d done to deserve such great people in her life. 

“You know how much I love you both, right?” she asked at lunchtime. They were the first words she’d been conscious of speaking all day.

They assured her that they did. 

\---

Leslie thought he might as well go visit Partridge now, before he decided what to do with the rest of his life. Family was important, after all, even if Ben was proving a reluctant traveler. The election results were really just a convenient excuse, and they both knew it. 

And then he said “Come with me,” which for some reason she hadn’t expected him to say.

“It makes sense,” said Ann. They were in Ann’s house while the rest of her campaign team boxed up all the banners and posters and paperwork, and moved them to one of Ron’s sheds—she couldn’t bear to throw them out, but she couldn’t stand looking at them right now, either, and there was no room left in her garage. “When was the last time you took a vacation? High school?”

“It hasn’t been _that_ long,” she protested. There was the scuba diving trip when she’d told that Timothy guy she’d loved him, and then he’d shot up and gotten the bends…maybe that was why she didn’t go on vacations more often. That, and she loved work too much to leave it even for a week. “And going to a small town in Minnesota is hardly going to be a vacation. It’s just going to be awkward, with the divorced parents and figuring out who stays where, and—”

Ann set a can of whipped cream and some chocolate syrup on the table, and went back for coffee. “You’re hardly teenagers. I’m sure they’ll let you sleep in the same room.” 

“Maybe, but who knows?” She squirted some whipped cream onto her spoon, and shoved the spoon into her mouth. “And it doesn’t matter. I can’t imagine Partridge being much fun.” 

Ann handed her a mug of coffee, and slid into the adjacent seat. “Don’t you want to meet Ben’s family?” 

She shook her head. “Yeah, but I want them to come here. Why can’t they come here?”

“Well, they could, but—but Ben’s unemployed right now, Les. It makes more sense for him to go.”

“I know,” said Leslie. She dumped extra chocolate syrup into her coffee. She needed it, today. “I just don’t want to leave. Not now.” 

“Leslie. You should go.”

The real reason she didn’t want to go had been stuck in her throat for a while, and she finally choked it out. “I feel like I’d be running away from Pawnee. Because I lost.” She drew a shaky breath. “I want to go to Partridge. I do. Just…not now.” 

Ann’s mouth twisted down at one corner. “Oh, _Leslie_ …” And before Leslie knew it, she was sobbing into Ann’s shoulder. 

It wasn’t _just_ running away, of course. It was running away, and the fact that she wouldn’t be anywhere close to being her best self. What if Ben’s parents hated her? 

“They won’t,” said Ann. “And even if they do, who cares?” 

“I care, Ann! I care.” 

“You’re awesome, and if they don’t love you, they’re stupid. Just don’t drink too much.”

“Good advice,” Leslie said. She accepted a tissue. “And what if he breaks up with me?”

“He’s not going to do that.”

“Every time I’ve ever gone on vacation with a boyfriend…”

In the end, Ann talked her into it, and marched Leslie over to her own house to tell Ron and Ben before she could change her mind back. She’d go for a week and be back at work by Monday, and he’d stay a little bit longer, to have a whole week in Minneapolis with his brother’s family.

When she saw all the tension drain out of Ben’s face, she knew she’d made the right decision.


	4. Chapter 4

Halfway to Indy, on the airport shuttle van, it occurred to her that this was the first time she’d ever been sort of happy to leave Pawnee, and _that_ realization turned her stomach into an icy pit.

“I’m not going to be at my best,” she warned Ben. 

He squeezed her hand. “Neither am I, probably.” 

\---

Partridge was fine, she supposed. But it wasn’t Pawnee. They were supposed to meet Ben’s father in the local diner, and when they walked in, instead of a warm greeting from JJ, they got a crisp “Benji,” from the elderly hostess, and a rather high degree of scrutiny from customers on all sides. 

“So,” she said, trying to keep the mood light, “it’s exactly like being a candidate, still.” 

“Sorry,” Ben sighed. He’d already managed to make his hair stand on end. “I should’ve warned you more strongly.” 

“It’s fine.” She glanced down at the menu. “How are the waffles here?” 

He sighed again. “Terrible,” he said, just as an older man with neatly cropped gray hair stepped up to their table. Leslie rushed to stand up, knocked over her water, and…oh god, she realized—this was kind of like a first date, wasn’t it? She made a mental note to keep her arms away from candles and other open flames, and not to talk about Darfur, Syria, Libya, or the Republican primaries. 

And thus began an uncomfortable four days of handshakes (the Wyatts didn’t hug), polite discussions of Parks business, and awkward, pointed questions about what exactly Ben was doing with his life. Two rounds, one for each parent. After one entire day of just sitting in living rooms (first Susan’s, then Daniel’s—she knew she was old enough to call Ben’s parents by their first names, but it felt weird), polite-arguing about whether or not Ben should attempt to return to government work, she decided even four days of this would be too much. They needed to get out and about. _She_ needed to get out and about.

First she just asked for the usual tour. 

“There is no usual tour,” Ben said.

“Well, what did you do the last time you brought someone here?”

He looked bewildered. “I never have.”

“Really?”

“I don’t come here if I don’t have to.” He stared into space for a moment. “And I didn’t exactly tell everyone I ever dated about Ice Town, either.” 

“Your parents have never met—”

“One or the other of them have met some people,” he said. “When they’ve visited me.”

“Okay, good.” She was glad, definitely, that she wasn’t the first. That was way too much pressure. So far she hadn’t set any part of her clothing on fire, or consumed anything that wasn’t intended to be consumed, or mentioned whales or Syria or the Republican primaries at all, but she _had_ already knocked over that water glass, and really, you could never be too careful. 

She made up a list of places she wanted to see—schools and downtown and the house where he’d grown up, which had been sold in the divorce. They drove by Town Hall, but he didn’t seem to want to stop there, and she didn’t push it. 

The grand tour of Partridge took about forty-five minutes, and then they were right back to living rooms and uncomfortable conversation. So Leslie insisted on being shown all the local parks and nature trails. Being outside would put everyone in a better mood.

 _That_ plan backfired spectacularly. Ben at least knew how to hike, but his parents were, as he put it later, “largely indifferent to the outdoors.” Leslie thought that might be putting it kindly. Ben’s mother spent most of their first park visit sitting under a tree, and later, when they’d traded parents, his father spent most of their nature hike in the car. 

Which was fine, really, since it gave them some quality alone time. If Ben’s father wondered why he returned from the hike covered in tree sap, he didn’t say anything. But he did give them a funny look, and then later, Ben muttered something about probably needing to pay more attention to them and then didn’t speak another word for about three hours. 

Somehow, Leslie spent most of breakfast the next morning talking about her penguin wedding. They weren’t whales—they weren’t even large aquatic mammals—but still, probably not the best topic of conversation; why had she brought it up in the first place? She couldn’t think of a good reason for that. And Ben’s father didn’t seem to think that a penguin wedding was cute. 

On their third night in Partridge, she snuck into the backyard to call Ann. 

“How’s it going up there?”

“It’s fine.” She glanced around surreptitiously, hoping no one would come looking for her. “But weird. It’s so weird, Ann.”

“Is it weirder than when your mom met Ben, and hit on him?”

“Well, no. But—” She had to think about how to describe it. “Remember what Ben was like when he first got to Pawnee? Like, polite on the surface but then really mean as soon as you challenged anything?” 

“You admitted yourself he wasn’t really mean—”

“Yeah, but they _are_. Both his parents are like that, especially his dad. Not to me, they’re nice to me, but to him. All the time. And they don’t even talk to each other! It’s all _don’t throw the rest of your life away_ and _when are you going to buy property_ and—” She sighed. 

“That’s everybody’s parents,” Ann said. “They expect you to be the same person you were at eighteen forever. Mine still treat me that way half the time, and I _do_ own property.” 

“My mom doesn’t!”

“Yeah, but you live in the same town as your mom. You see her all the time. Hasn’t Ben spent the last eighteen years avoiding Minnesota?” 

Leslie glanced up at the sky. That was one really nice thing about Partridge—no air pollution and no concentrated city lights. It was probably the best thing about Partridge. The nights had all been crisp and clean and cloudless, full of stars. She picked out a few constellations. “The worst part is he’s kind of turning back into Mean Ben.” 

“Really?” Ann sounded skeptical. 

“Well, no, not really,” she admitted. “He’s just really tense. And I want to fix things, you know?” 

“Yeah, I do,” Ann said. “But I don’t think this is something you can fix.” 

“I can try. Isn’t that why I’m here? Brainstorm with me, Ann.” 

Ann sighed. “Well, what _were_ you doing to de-stress?”

“Sex,” she said, without thinking about it.

“So do that, then.” 

Leslie made a face in response, then realized, a moment later, that Ann couldn’t see her. “In his mom’s house? What if she hears us?”

“Well, how loud are you?” 

“That depends. Sometimes, when we—”

“You know what?” Ann interrupted. “Never mind. There are some things I don’t need to hear. Change of subject. How are _you_ doing?”

Leslie sighed. “I’m fine. Mostly. Honestly, I’m not thinking about it too much.”

“Good,” said Ann, firmly. “That’s what vacations are for.” 

\---

After dinner the next night, they opened a bottle of wine, brought out Ben’s iPad, and showed his mother pictures from Pawnee—a few he’d never emailed from the Harvest Festival, some from the wiffleball league, some from—actually, aside from a disturbing series that clearly should’ve been titled _Andy and April Experiment with the Camera_ , all of the pictures were from Parks events. Or her campaign. There were a lot of pictures from her campaign. 

“Sorry,” he muttered, softly. “Forgot those were in this folder.” 

“No, it’s fine,” she said, although most of her hurt, suddenly. “I’m okay.” Ben wrapped his arm around her waist, and she leaned into him a little, not really caring whether or not his mother was watching. The wine helped, in that regard. But she still found herself standing up a few minutes later and announcing she was tired and needed to go to bed early, grateful that Susan didn’t know how little sleep she actually needed. 

She changed into her pajamas, texted Ann for a few minutes, then slipped across the hallway to brush her teeth. Maybe she should get a glass of water, too; she didn’t want to have a headache when they left for Minneapolis the next morning. Water first, then tooth-brushing. 

In her absence, they’d moved on to watching her campaign ad. On repeat, it seemed. She wasn’t sure if it was the wine or just that it had taken a few days to settle in, but for the first time all week, both Ben and his mother looked relaxed. Happy, even.

“Leslie, this is adorable.”

“Oh,” she said, taken aback. “Thank you.” 

“I would’ve voted for that little girl. I can’t believe Pawnee didn’t.”

“It was close,” Leslie muttered. She collapsed back on the couch, next to Ben, who automatically wrapped an arm around her shoulders. “Really close.” 

“Don’t,” Ben said, suddenly. “Please.” 

Susan was already up, though, and pulling down a box of old, dusty VHS tapes. 

“Are those what I think they are?” Leslie asked. She’d always wanted to see Ben’s mayoral speeches. Heck, she’d wanted to see them for the last eighteen years or so.

“Better,” said Susan, cheerfully. She turned on the VCR. 

Ben groaned. “I thought you got rid of all that stuff. I thought I _made you_ get rid of it.” He was gripping Leslie’s arm awfully tightly, but she didn’t say anything. 

“You asked me to dispose of the things you didn’t destroy. Which I did not.” She pressed play, and returned to the counter. “Benji. I wouldn’t spring that tape on you unsuspecting. Good lord, how cruel do you think I am?” 

“Well, if this isn’t that, then—”

“Shush,” she said. “I’ve been waiting to show someone this for years.” She threw Leslie a wink. “I wouldn’t bring these tapes out for anyone, just so you know.” 

Leslie grinned. “I can’t wait.”

And then a tiny Ben came onscreen, hair tousled, wearing a white bathrobe over plaid pajamas, and wielding a plastic light saber. 

He was campaigning for the Galactic Senate. 

The adult Ben reached for the wine. But Leslie thought she’d never seen anything so adorable, and she couldn’t keep herself from clapping and demanding to see more home movies when the Jedi campaign was over.

Ben shifted beneath her. “So you kept…you kept the other stuff?” he asked.

“Just the one tape,” said his mother. “Campaign speeches.”

“If I let you see this, are you going to break up with me?” he asked, turning to Leslie. 

She gave his leg a reassuring squeeze. “Nope. Are you gonna let me see it?” 

“Because if it’s—is it just the campaign speeches?” 

“And your inaugural address.” 

“Oh god,” he groaned. But then he shook his head. “Well, whatever. It can’t be any more embarrassing than the Perd Hapley interview.” And he refilled the wine glasses. 

She thought, in the end, that he might have enjoyed watching his campaign speeches, at least a tiny bit. Maybe. The tape was pretty fantastic. “These are _awful_ ,” she kept saying, but she was laughing—they were all laughing. “I can’t believe I let you run my campaign. What kind of platform was that? What the hell were you _wearing_?” 

He cringed. “It was 1992. That’s my only defense.” 

“You thought you were so cool.”

“Hey,” he said. “For a brief moment, there, I _was_.” 

“Yeah,” she agreed, remembering how excited she’d been when his picture had appeared in the Pawnee paper. “You were.” She turned to Ben’s mother, fully aware that the wine was about to do some talking for her—should she stop herself? Eh, what the hell. “I had the biggest crush on Ben, in high school.” 

“Well,” Susan said—Leslie thought there was a little gleam in her eye, now—“he was very handsome back then.”

“Still is,” Leslie said.

“Good lord,” Ben muttered. His arm jerked reflexively, and Leslie knew he would’ve put a hand to his forehead if the arm wasn’t wrapped around her.

“And was, despite the shirts,” she added. 

He nudged her in the ribs. “Oh, like you didn’t wear terrible clothes in high school.” 

She most certainly had not worn terrible clothes in high school. “My fashion icon was Hillary Clinton,” she said, with as much seriousness as she could muster. Then she broke out in giggles again. 

Ben looked over at his mother, as if he’d just remembered they weren’t alone. “She isn’t kidding.” 

“Okay, rewind it,” Leslie said. “I want to see the inauguration again.” 

“Seriously?”

“Seriously,” she said, nodding. “That one was a pretty good speech.” Ben groaned, but he rewound the tape, and they watched the inauguration a second time, wobbly tripod and all. This time Leslie demanded thorough commentary, which Ben gave, albeit a little reluctantly. But she kept leaning against him, holding on to the arm he still had wrapped around her waist, and he stayed relaxed.

Susan just gazed at both of them for a few moments, silently, when the tape ended again—judging? Leslie couldn’t tell. But then the corner of Susan’s mouth twisted up, the same way Ben’s did, and she felt…accepted, somehow. 

“Thank you,” Leslie said, “both of you, for letting me see that.” 

“My pleasure.” For a moment, Leslie was sure she was going to say something else, but all that came out was, “Well, I’m going to clean this up and then go to bed.” 

“Oh, let me help,” Leslie started, but Ben was already off the couch and carrying things into the kitchen, leaving her standing alone next to his mother. 

Maybe the wine was talking again, but this seemed like a really appropriate moment for a hug. And so what if the Wyatts weren’t huggers? Leslie—Leslie was _great_ at hugs. She’d turned Ben around pretty quickly. 

At first, there was some tension, but after a moment, Susan returned the embrace. Briefly. But it was a start.

“Ben, I like this one a lot,” she called. 

“Yeah, I know,” he called back, and it was amazing, Leslie thought, how exactly alike their tone of voice was. “I do too.” 

Susan had the same sort of muted, deadpan facial expression too—the one Leslie had first thought meant Ben didn’t care, before she’d realized it meant he was trying not to let on that he cared very much indeed. 

“Don’t break up with him, okay?” she told Leslie. 

Leslie smiled. “Wasn’t planning on it.” 

A few moments later, when they were safely alone in the guest bedroom, she asked, “Did you put her up to that?”

“No.” Leslie raised her eyebrows, and Ben shook his head.“Really. I didn’t.” 

“Hmm.” 

“I didn’t.” He reached out a hand, started rubbing her lower back. “When would I have? You were in the room with us the whole time.”

“I don’t know. You could’ve arranged it hours ago. You’re very sneaky.” 

He smirked. “Well, she loves you. That’s the important part.” 

“Mm,” Leslie said. “I’m very lovable.” 

“I know you are.” 

“Tomorrow,” she said, propping herself up on one arm, “I want to see Town Hall. Like, actually go see it.” 

He shifted, mirroring her. “I thought you might.” 

“And I’m gonna make out with you there.”

Ben grinned. “Oh, are you?” 

“I am,” she said, with a serious nod. “And I’m going to make my teenage self so jealous. Just you wait.”

As it turned out, he couldn’t wait. But that was okay. She didn’t want to wait either. 

“Ben?” she whispered. “Is your mother a heavy sleeper?” 

He nodded. 

Leslie’s teenage self would have been _scandalized_.

\---

Partridge’s Town Hall was small and kind of hideous. “It was built in the ‘70s,” Ben explained. 

“I can tell,” she muttered. She was watching him carefully, for any signs of impending human disaster-ness, but he seemed calm. He was watching her, too, she thought.

Ben gestured towards a small wing. “So that side of the building is where all the—the bad stuff happened. And then that over there—” He pointed at a small gazebo, and raised his eyebrow. “That’s where I got dumped.” 

When she’d tried to plan this one out, she’d envisioned a much different setup.

“The way I imagined it,” she said, slowly, “you got dumped inside the town hall itself.” Though, now that she thought about it, it would be a bit untoward to just enter a government building and start making out there, even if they had a perfectly good reason to do so. 

“Does that matter?”

“Nope.” She threw her arms around his neck. “It just matters that we’re here. Together. And I’m not going to break up with you anywhere, so…” Ben was just looking at her now, with that little smile, the one that made her heart pound out of her chest. He traced gently along her jaw with one thumb, and tilted her head back slightly, and then—

Ben was right, the waffles in the diner had been pretty terrible—but she needed one, after that much making out. He looked pleased when she said so. 

She loved him for a lot of reasons, not least of which was that he really, truly understood about the waffles. 

And the waffles really were terrible. The waitress brought her Cool Whip instead of whipped cream, then glared at Leslie as if to challenge her to do anything about it. Ben’s sandwich was wrong, too. 

For once, she let it go. 

\---

They spent a night in Minneapolis, with Ben’s brother—who, to Leslie’s relief, was much more easygoing than his parents were. Almost too easygoing. She would almost have wondered if he was adopted, if he hadn’t shared Ben’s hair. Then she flew back to Pawnee on her own. Maybe it was good to have a week by herself, even if Pawnee was still making her feel a little sad. She’d be able to get more of her house cleaned up. She hoped Ann would have some time to help. 

On Monday, she returned to the Parks department, which was the same as it always was, and rallied her troops around the circular table.

“No one should be sad,” she said. “I love Pawnee, and its parks, and this job. I always have, and I always will.” She grinned around the table, and everyone clapped and cheered (except for Ron, who just nodded). But she still felt like everyone in City Hall was walking on eggshells around her, especially for the first few days.

“Now that you’re back full-time…” Ron said. He nodded briefly, and Andy dropped a bunch of projects Chris wanted done in front of her. She was grateful for that, Ron’s general refusal to dwell. 

“All right, then,” she said, as cheerfully as she could muster. “Let’s do this.” She pushed up the sleeves of her blazer. They fell right back down again, but that wasn’t the point. 

Leslie had all but one of the projects completed by that Friday, of course, and that made her feel better—until she happened to glance at the Sullivan Street Park thermometer on her second Monday back in the office. _That_ made her want to—to go home and spend all day on the couch with Ann and Ben again. 

Since that was obviously impossible—Ann wasn’t even in City Hall today—she sent them both texts. _I could have used the campaign contributions to build a park, and then I would have actually accomplished something, you know?_

Ann took a couple of hours to respond. _Sorry, didn’t see this, spent all day treating obese children for heat stroke. I’ll be over at eight with a pizza._

Ben called her back almost at once. “You think you didn’t accomplish anything?” he said, without preamble. 

“No, just…” She sighed. “How’s Minneapolis?” Probably not great, if he was responding to her text so quickly. She hoped he hadn’t just been staring at his phone. 

“Much cuter since my niece arrived.” She could hear a tiny voice babbling in the background, and smiled. “Although I might need new sunglasses. Mine seem to be covered in baby cereal.”

“Can’t you just clean them?”

“I’m trying. That stuff’s like cement, though.” 

She thought about the first time she’d seen Ben’s Ray-Bans, at the children’s concert. That seemed like several lifetimes ago. How had she ever thought Ben was trying to destroy her career? Well, other than the fact that he’d recommended firing half the department. But she understood why, now, just like she understood—she was pretty sure she understood—what it meant to build a _life_ with someone. 

“Get the same kind,” she said. “I like those sunglasses.”

“Okay.” 

“Miss you.”

“Miss you too.” 

April appeared in the doorway of her office, then. “When’s Ben coming back?” she demanded. “A bottle of pop exploded in the freezer. Someone needs to clean it up.” 

As soon as he got back, Leslie thought. As soon as he got back to Pawnee, she’d ask him to move in. Saturday. He was coming back on Saturday and she’d go pick him up at the airport and she’d ask him right then. 

Maybe she’d be clever about it. She could just drive him straight back to her house—which wouldn’t be suspicious, she’d do that anyway, since they’d need some alone time as soon as possible—and then she’d have a clever surprise waiting. Maybe a subtle surprise? She could get two stuffed penguins and a little house and have the penguins move in together. That would be cute. Or she could go more romantic—she could spell out _will you move in with me_ in flowers on the bed. She could see if Tom could get another favor out of the skywriting guy. She could—she could ask April and Andy to destroy the house so no one could live in it, and Ben would _have_ to move in. No, that was probably going too far. She didn’t want to be responsible for extensive property damage. Or eagles. She could try to say it with eagles…no, she was pretty sure Ben would freak out if a giant bird of prey swooped down at him. 

She started two lists that afternoon, _How I Should Ask Ben to Move In_ and _Stuff We Need for the Best Children’s Concert Ever_.

“Donna,” she called, “do you still have Freddy Spaghetti’s phone number?” He wasn’t big enough to headline this year, she thought, but he might consent to being a supporting act.

\---

So everything was fine. She was fine. She was ninety-five percent fine, and feeling better every day. Even if she’d lost the election, she was still Leslie Fucking Knope, and she still loved parks, and her friends, and providing services to citizens. Losing one election didn’t change any of those things; how could it? Nothing could change those things.

She was up to maybe ninety-eight percent fine by Thursday evening. She’d stayed until well after hours, working on the children’s concert, and thought she might have stayed there all night if she wasn’t so hungry. Would it be awful if she had a waffle for lunch and a waffle for dinner? Probably. But Ann was at the hospital, and Ben was in Minnesota, so she might as well take advantage of being alone tonight, and go back to JJ’s. Pleasant thoughts of whipped cream and maple syrup drifted through her mind as she locked up the department.

Then she turned a corner and saw Councilman Howser and the new Councilman Newport together. Having to think of him as _Councilman Newport_ was bad enough. But when the two men laughed and shook hands, and Councilman Howser complimented Bobby Newport on all his hard work, and said how glad he was to have Bobby on the council, and then they walked down the hall together without Bobby embarrassing himself in any way...

Fifteen percent fine. She was fifteen percent fine, and dropping fast. 

So maybe her gut reaction—that she absolutely didn’t want to be seen—maybe that wasn’t particularly mature, but she found herself hurrying in the opposite direction anyway, before either of them noticed her. Where to go? Her first thought was back to her office, but what if they walked past it and looked inside? Stupid glass walls.

Without really being conscious that she had even gone up the stairs, she found herself on the second floor, on the bench in front of the wildflower mural. It was as good a place as any to collect herself. No one was around, so she swung her feet up and lay there, on her back, staring at the ceiling. 

One of the florescent lights was buzzing. Flickering slightly, too. She watched it for a while without comprehension, before her eyes blinked shut and stayed that way, holding back a few stray tears. After a while, she thought she heard a slight shuffling in the corner—maybe some uncertain footsteps—but didn’t bother to look and see who might have made the noise. Not until a shadow passed over her closed eyes, and she opened them to see a familiar tan windbreaker and skinny necktie above her.

“What are you doing up here?” Ben asked. 

“Being sad.” 

“Why?”

She shook her head against the wooden bench as best she could, grabbed the end of his tie, and tugged gently. 

Minutes later, when she’d finally kissed him enough to _almost_ make up for the past five days, she remembered to sit up and ask how he’d gotten here. 

“Airplane?” he said, sitting next to her. “And a shuttle from Indianapolis, which dropped me off—”

“How’d you get into City Hall?”

“Borrowed Chris’s key.”

“He let you do that?” 

Ben shrugged. “He’s a stickler for rules, but he’s a sucker for romance.”

This was true, she thought. “But what are you doing here _now_? I thought you weren’t coming back until Saturday.”

“No, I was always coming back today. I just _told_ you Saturday. See, I was trying to plan a big surprise for you.”

“I was planning a surprise for you, too,” she said, suddenly remembering that she had decided to ask him to move in as soon as he returned.

“Okay. You go first.” 

She did still want it to be a properly planned surprise, though, so she shook her head. “No, you go. Mine isn’t ready yet. I couldn’t find the right size penguin.” 

Ben looked puzzled for a split second, but the expression passed. Or, not so much passed as changed into something between nausea and terror. “Well, I decided not to do the whole surprise,” he said. “I mean, it’s more or less ready, but I wanted to make sure it was a surprise you wanted, first, and…” 

“Is it a good surprise?”

“I certainly hope so.”

“Then why wouldn’t I want it?”

He twitched a couple of times. “Because it’s a big one.” 

She grinned. “Well, let’s hear it.” 

“Okay.” He wiped his palms on his pants, and took her hands. “Okay. Uh, okay, well—I know—I know we haven’t been together for a very long time. With the beginning being the way it was, and then when we had to break up, and—but the point is—”

Leslie knew _exactly_ how long they’d been together, of course; she’d calculated it down to the day during one of the sleepless pre-election nights, and she almost interrupted to tell him the precise number. But she held her tongue. Ben probably knew the exact number too; he was the numbers robot, after all. 

“The point is, I never used to think about the future, very much,” he continued. “Not until Pawnee.” 

She raised an eyebrow. “Two days after you got here, the day after we met, you told me you wanted to run for office again someday.” 

“Exactly. _Someday_. It was a very abstract someday.”

“Yeah, okay,” she agreed. 

“But then there was the Harvest Festival to look forward to,” he said, “and figuring out how I was going to kiss you for the first time, god knows that occupied me for about six months, and then—well, granted, we never did think much about what would happen if we got caught.” 

“No.” 

“And when we were apart, I went back to not caring. I couldn’t. Except about you, and your campaign. That was all I could care about.”

She sighed. “Well, that’s over now.”

Ben gripped her hands a little more tightly. “I know. And I’m still—I would give anything to change the outcome. Anything I could, other than—I couldn’t give you up again.” 

“So what’s in your future now?”

“I don’t know,” he said, slowly. “I really don’t know, which is more than a little alarming, to be honest. But I do know—I know—this is going to sound—”

She gave him a little nudge with her knee. “Say it.” 

“I don’t want it to just be my future. I want it to be our future.” 

“I want that too,” she said, quickly, and he squeezed her hands again. The nauseous expression had passed, now. 

“So, I thought I was just going to come here and—and do the whole thing, you know? But you’re _Leslie Knope_.” He smiled. “You probably have multiple binders of plans for how you wanted this to happen. Or you’d want to be the one to do it. Or—well, the point is, it’s not something we’ve talked about before, and this isn’t something to just _spring_ on someone, you know?” 

“Ben.”

“Yeah?”

“You can say the word.” Her voice came out calmly, she thought, considering how fast her heart was racing.

He took a deep breath, and nodded. “I want to marry you. Not right away—it probably makes more sense to try living together first—but—”

Leslie launched herself at him, and hoped that this kiss said all the things she wanted it to say. It must have, because he looked slightly drunk now, with unfocused vision and all his hair standing on end. 

Screw the stuffed penguin. “My surprise was going to be asking you to move in with me,” she said. “But I think yours might be better.”

He shook his head slightly. 

“And for the record, I don’t have a binder for this.” 

The corner of his mouth skewed upwards, and he took her hands again. “Really?”

“Nope. It’s the one thing I’ve never planned.” Or imagined. Had she ever really imagined someone proposing to her? She didn’t think she had—not seriously, anyway. “But I want it.” 

“My sister-in-law,” Ben said, “who plans basically nothing, just spent the last four days explaining to me that proposals and weddings are the one thing that _every_ little girl spends hours upon hours thinking about, from the time she’s old enough to understand what marriage is.”

“How did you respond?”

“I showed her your campaign ad. I don’t think she got it.” He smiled. “So, really? You really have no pre-existing expectations for a proposal?” He took a deep breath. “I guess that takes some of the pressure off. Well, just knowing that you _want_ one takes most of the pressure off.” 

“Now,” she said, suddenly. “Do it now.” 

“I—what?”

“This is already perfect,” Leslie said, feeling the words rush out of her. “Ben, I’m glad you didn’t just spring it on me. I’m glad you waited to find out whether I wanted it first, because it’s a big thing and it should be discussed first, and—and now we’ve discussed it. And I don’t know exactly what’s in my future either, but—but I want it to be our future.” She paused to draw breath. “And we’re both here, and it’s perfect. This is my favorite spot in the world, did you know that? This bench? So you should just go ahead and do it. It’s not like we’re going to get married tomorrow. We can take as much time as we need with the next part. Just—” 

He cut her off, non-verbally, and her knees buckled. Even though she was sitting down. And she closed her eyes and leaned into him and heard herself moan, actually moan, when he pulled away. 

When Leslie opened her eyes again, he was kneeling in front of her, with a tiny box. 

“This is the opposite of the button,” he started, flipping the box open. He might have been planning to say something else, but when he saw the single tear that was collecting in the corner of her eye, he silently wiped it away, and slid the ring on her finger. “So that’s a yes?” 

She nodded. “It’s a yes.” She could barely even tell what the ring looked like, but she was pretty sure it was perfect. 

This was the part where they kissed, any movie would have told them so, but instead, Ben shook his head. “Okay, so—nope, I do want to say it.” He took another deep breath. “Leslie, will you marry me?”

She nodded again, and grinned. “I already let you put the ring on.” 

They gazed stupidly at each other for a few moments. _Then_ he finally got his act together, with the kissing—until Leslie’s stomach rumbled loudly, and she blushed and pulled back. 

“Well, that was embarrassing,” she said. 

“Let’s get you to JJ’s,” Ben said, pulling her off the bench. “And call Ann. She’s probably wondering what’s going on.” 

“You told her?” 

He squeezed her hand. “I thought she might know if there was a binder. And your ring size. I hoped she would know your ring size.” 

They proceeded down the stairwell, with their hands wrapped together, and Leslie still staring at her finger. “Ben?”

“Yeah?”

“I love you.” 

“That is never going to get old,” he remarked. “I love you too.”


End file.
